7io 
Notes. 
[October, 
three-eighths of an inch from the surface of the oil, so that he is 
able to pass a spark between them, as the thermometer registers 
an increase of one degree in temperature. By this means the 
disturbing influences above noted are reduced to a minimum, 
and much greater accuracy in the results of such examinations 
is assured. 
The Patents-Committee of the German Association for Pro- 
moting the Interests of Chemical Industry recently held a 
session at which an interesting communication from the scientific 
staff of the Baden Aniline Works was read. The authors point 
out that neither a novel substance nor a novel application of a 
substance obtained chemically can be patented in Germany. 
Concerning the preliminary investigation they doubt the possi- 
bility of deciding a priori on an invention. 
Geology, Palaeontology, &c. 
The Memoirs of the Geological Survey, England and Wales, 
includes one on “The Geology of the N.W. part of Essex and 
the N.E. part of Herts, with parts of Cambridgeshire and 
Suffolk, by W. Whitaker, W. H. Penning, W. H. Dalton, and 
F. J. Bennett. The authors describe the cretaceous strata from 
the Gault to the Upper Chalk, the Eocene beds from the Thanet 
Sands to the London Clay, the Red Crag and the Glacial deposits 
of boulder-clay and gravel and sands. We notice that in a bed 
of so-called peat found in a cutting between Audley End and 
Saffron, in the valley of the Cam, two cart loads of large mam- 
malian bones were taken from an area of 60 feet by 20. Some 
of them are the lower jaws of an ox, probably Bos longifrons. 
They bear artificially-made markings, and along with them was 
found a very fine horn of the Irisk elk, Cervus Megaceros. 
The “ Records of the Geological Survey of India ” contain a 
translation of a paper on the geographical distribution of fossil 
organisms in India, read before the Imperial Academy of 
Sciences in Vienna by Dr. Waagen, formerly of the Geological 
Survey of India. The author considers that at the close of the 
Eocene epoch the sea retreated altogether from India ; only in 
the neighbourhood of Karrachi and Arracan does it appear to 
have touched the Indian continent, so that the sea of the 
Miocene and Pliocene periods probably extended away to the 
southward, whilst a north-westerly connection of the continents 
probably took place with North Africa through Arabia. Blan- 
ford’s supposition of an Indo-Oceanic continent uniting Africa, 
India, and Australia, and existing without important changes from 
the end of the palaeozoic up to the miocene and pliocene periods, 
is thoroughly erroneous. A submerged forest has been discovered 
on Bombay Island, remarkable as showing that in recent or sub^ 
recent times a depression must have taken place in the immediate 
neighbourhood of ground which appears to have been raised. 
